


A Détente aka Waiting

by Curiousforever



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, Injury Recovery, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Romantic Fluff, Smut, Strained Relationships, Vulnerable Hannibal, Will Graham Loves Hannibal Lecter, Will explores, mentions of past Will/Molly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:55:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27183457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curiousforever/pseuds/Curiousforever
Summary: After casting them off the cliff, Will sets Hannibal off to treat his wounds while returning to make a clean cut with his past. They meet after months when Will arrives in Cuba ... and there is his first time for a few things, even telling the truth.If you ever madly loved, the feeling of being in love with that someone clings to you; even if they are no more real than their past impression in your head, even if for years you try to love and live with someone else… it feels real, yet not the same. Incomplete. And the question ever lingers in your mind, leaving an ache in your heart - what would it have been like to have that person and that love back.This was his chance.~  CoverArt Included ~
Relationships: Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 6
Kudos: 97





	A Détente aka Waiting

**Author's Note:**

>   
> I wrote this fluffy ficlet as my very first impression of the boys, after seeing Hannibal almost a year ago. Little I knew then that its setting was like an unofficial post- S3 cannon :)) Hope you like it!  
>   
> Many thanks for the great support to my beta [theLadyLazaruss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLadyLazaruss).  
>   
> Détente - (the relaxation of strained relations or tensions) (working title: Waiting)  
> 

It is a late February afternoon when he arrives into this alien world, into the blinding sun and suffocating heat. The conditions are rather contrary to those his former colleagues and family would believe he would thrive in. He went as far with the ruse as to spend weeks pretending that he had exchanged his career in the FBI for the solitary life of a fisherman, somewhere, in the cold north of the Georgian Bay in Canada.

With Alana and Bedelia out of the way, and Jack no longer the Behavioural Science head, the task was an easy one. Suspended, in hiding, on the run, reeling from their own misfortunes, they were too distracted to hunt him down. With a single decision of his weary heart he had set them on their career pedestals, and with another one, in a single day, he stripped them of their prestigious lives. Will smirks almost ruefully, his dark humour coming out. Hannibal would smile with him if he shared his thoughts, and more than a little proud of his clever boy, even though Will's escapade separated them for months. Yet again.

As they agreed, Chyioh waits for him in the airport parking lot. She is not alone. The man introduces himself as Sergio, and he is pleased to serve the _charming señorita_ with his minivan, of a mysterious brand, as her taxi for the day. Will suspects that their chauffeur has assembled his nondescript vehicle somewhere in the junkyard by himself.

"This is rather relaxed for a life undercover," Will mutters by way of greeting.

Chyioh forgets all her charm when she responds, "It's impossible to get your own car here. Money alone is not enough," her tone is glacial. "You must have powerful connections; the resources are extremely scarce."

The local black economy was probably the safest topic between them, and if possible, Will tried not to deviate from it during the drive to their new home in exile.

Instead, he listens to the engine's steady rumbling and turns towards the window to watch the countryside behind the glass, burned by the brilliant sun, pale and withered. Gardens, yards and fields, miles and miles of land starved for the monsoon rain, late again. Will, too, feels starved. 

It had started as a simmering of something undefined inside of him. By the third year of Hannibal's imprisonment, it was boiling, entirely shaped, hot, and threatening to overspill - an irascible need for his counterpart. 

He gives away nothing, says nothing; his fingers merely curl and uncurl on their own accord, as Hannibal's used to do. The heat in the car provides him with a plausible excuse; he is trying to cool his sweaty palms, but he would bet Chiyoh knows. 

The awareness of her stifles his airways and makes his stomach twitch. She is a reminder, which makes him more giddy and anxious with the realisation that at home, Hannibal is waiting for him, uncertain as these starved and parched lands, whether to expect a nourishing surge of rain or another destructive tide of fire he must withstand. Will is not sure himself.

Amid the drying vegetation, their house was low and inconspicuous, one of many squatted sparsely on both sides of the worn suburban road. With its terracotta shingles, catching vibrant orange, red, and pink hues of the setting sun, it fit the image of classic Caribbean architecture he knew from vacation ads. Behind a simply crafted iron gate laid the hidden gem with a private courtyard, full of potted high tropical plants, and surrounded by the open-air corridors with overhangs that separated the building's heart from the outside area. In one of the open doors, leant on a frame, stood Hannibal. 

He looked nothing like Will had imagined, having never experienced the man in such a climate. And he caught himself staring at Hannibal, once neat and prim, and untouched by the sun, like a besotted teenager.

His hair. Ashen, silver, blond? An undefined colour would be a better answer. Longer and untamed, framing his face, now intensified by a fine golden tan. His eyes were still dark, velvety, and sharp, in striking contrast with his poised figure clad in elegant cream and white, light fabrics fitting loosely to his thin, too thin frame. Will noticed the latter with alarm. His heart fluttered wildly as he let his duffel bag drop to flagstones and took two steps at a time to stride across the courtyard. He was frenzied with the need to feel him, to reassure himself that the man he left broken, almost half-dead, and very much in love, is fine. 

Hannibal moved at the same time, raised his arms in unsure invitation, and without a second thought, Will leapt into his embrace. It is a fierce, desperate thing, much like in the kitchen in Baltimore. One hand slides into his hair as the other presses between his shoulder blades without intention to hurt, only if by force of their grasp. Will holds tight, pushes purposeful fingertips against the thin torso, into the weak muscles of Hannibal’s back, to examine their wear and feels a difference in Hannibal’s heartbeat against his own chest. The soft raspy voice, he longed for, pierces the strained silence when Hannibal speaks into space next to his head.

"I assume you meant what you said, then. You were serious."

"I'm here, aren't I?" He wants to pour a small bitter laugh into the answer to diminish Hannibal's awe, feeling shy of this undeserved affection and to lighten the weight of the decision he has made. 

He left with a message, that time under the cliff, one thought carefully, concise and precise in order for Hannibal to have something - motivation to survive, something to convey: 

I feel the same; I love you too, I want you in my life. Please, you must not die.

He said it aloud.

Will set up the navigation on Hannibal's emergency motorboat. With only Chyioh at hand and a few instructions on faking the story of their predicament, he sent them off toward this proverbial island of freedom, where, according to Hannibal, doctors are still capable professionals, despite their struggling healthcare. He then let himself be washed adrift to shore and found, so he could start to work on a clean cut between the life that lost value for him and the one he had quite deliberately promised to Hannibal. 

Over dinner, it became apparent that they have ampler means at their disposal to survive than his advice, professionally forged passports and not a small amount of cash. The details, Chiyoh neglected to share with Will during their very few and very brief phone conversations since the primary matter of interest was Hannibal's state of health. She left him in the dark, and paralysed with fretting over how to transfer money to the country your government has imposed an economic embargo. 

Eventually, he figured it out,... but for what purpose? The realisation sets his fragile equilibrium off. After dinner, he stays with Chiyoh to bicker about the matter under the pretence of helping to clean the dishes (rather fine china and silverware for resources so scarce), while Hannibal retires into one of the bedrooms. Chiyoh doesn't label the room as Hannibal's and doesn't bother to offer Will a different one. Not for the shortage, but because she would not even entertain a thought about him having his own. And she is right.

When Will enters it, he still is a little disgruntled by their debate and with Chiyoh's, on his scale, little appreciation for any help he was trying to provide them from the outside. He is put off even more because, although they are about the same age, she had a more mature reaction to the money misunderstanding. If he can call it as such. 

With greater force than necessary, Will pulls out the plastic bag full of medications Chiyoh requested for Hannibal. 

"Here. Don't ask where I got them from." He sets the antibiotics, topic corticoids, and painkillers on the nearest bedside table with the resolution of letting go of his grudge, mainly because Hannibal follows him with unbridled though fond amusement.

"I haven't dared to take it for granted, but I have to admit, I still hoped for you two to have, if not a harmonious, then a least a passable relationship. But perhaps it was too soon to draw conclusions." 

"Seems like I can't please her. Nothing I can do."

"Trust is difficult to learn again, Will."

"Well, we all need time," Will volleys back with a snort and gives the room a once over: warm earthy colours, spacious, not to Hannibal's opulent standard, but not cheaply furnished. He sets to mosey over, touches everything, restless. Translucent drapes over the windows, a king-sized bed with canopy over its slim posts, and, unlike the only tiled floors in the rest of the house, a vast Persian carpet rolls out from under its both sides. After a few moments of the aimless scrutiny, his eyes slid to Hannibal sitting on the mattress's edge, his shirt untucked over the slacks. The house is air-conditioned; the heat cannot be the reason for loosening his clothes. 

"May I?" He gestures toward the hidden wound. 

"Of course," Hannibal lets Will kneel in front of his legs, and as he pulls up one of the shirttails, Will understands why Chyioh is so cold.

There was a 'smile,' matching his own in size. The scar was rugged to the touch and still angry red, evidence of the full-scale abdominal surgery Hannibal would have had less than five months ago.

"A complication with internal infection. Mostly just an itch and an ache now." Hannibal offers, but Will can't tear his eyes from it, tracing with his fingers the swollen, marred skin across the flat plane of Hannibal's stomach – his design. 

His expressions change under Hannibal's gaze. He could play this scene out in a wholly ironic way, like a bad movie script; he might tell him that it will be a while, familiar with itch and ache himself, or promise him that it will get better. But his capacity for bitterness had already reached its peak years ago. Time had rapidly dulled its edge, and these days, he doesn't even need to bite his tongue anymore. He looks up into Hannibal's face, his tone soft, timbre unsteady.

"Why didn't you tell me?" 

"I didn't want you to be disturbed. You had to focus on your goal. Tell me, Will," Hannibal's hands were placed firmly over his tights, not allowing their usual fidgetiness, tattling on how unsure he feels around him: a new, strange human quality very endearing to Will. "Have you achieved your 'clean cut'?"

He analyses the question and all the ways he can answer – clean in what sense? - but he knows Hannibal is interested in the only one: Molly.

Will allows himself a moment to ponder if he regrets, which is also a part of the question. Surprisingly, his thoughts drift again to Chyioh, back to their argument in the kitchen. Such an encounter would be impossible with his wife. Not least because Molly was good-spirited, caring and considerate, but in his delusional concept of marriage, an open confrontation had no place. He was self-conscious of inconvenient topics, his past being a vast part of them. He would evade opening that can of teeming wriggling feasting worms or simply cease the conversation the moment Molly strayed in that direction.

Hannibal struck home; they were heading toward a maddeningly polite life, almost like adhering to an unspoken contract. 

Only marriage requirements for Molly were vastly different from his. For her congeniality, he offered his lies, neatly stitched into a suit of a _sweet_ man. He genuinely loved her, liked her, but for all the wrong and selfish reasons. In analogy, perhaps for the reasons, the Dragon liked the women he changed. They served his purpose, for him to become different. Hannibal had compared Will to the Dragon once. Hell, even in this, Hannibal was correct. 

His own rationalising has significantly changed as well; he no longer considers their marriage unfair solely to Molly. The self-imposed requirements for playing a poster husband's part to her had felt like a trap - a prison of his own making. In practice, his whole idea of having a normal family stung.

Here, with Chyioh and Hannibal, there isn't such a contract, the superficial understanding or false propriety.

Will can argue about paying the hospital bills for a serial killer he loves, supporting the two criminal fugitives financially from afar, and it hits close, he reflects, to a form of caring about family. And he is seen and recognised in the entirety of his unpredictable criminal mind, even if Chiyoh is not entirely happy with him for not doing enough, nor does she appreciate his presence in Hannibal's life. They were all alike in some way, not decent and not nice past the surface and outside this little family, with no need for secrets, concealing a lacking sense of morality. They accepted him, even though this dire situation was mainly his fault.

"I can finally breathe," he says.

"Will." Hannibal sighs, somewhat mournfully, and opens his mouth; his eyes assume that far-away look before he decides to continue, "I was thinking, we shall refrain from metaphorical speech."

"So now you want me to speak my mind?" comes his high-pitched voice. Such radical changes he set off on both sides, by casting them over the bluff?

"Our minds. Please," Hannibal looks down at him half-lidded, lips in that pouting line that indicates he has his full attention even though Will frustrates him to the point of resignation. Will wonders how much Hannibal is aware of his own charm while he braces himself for a retort. 

In truth, love never deterred Will from finding ways of speech to wound Hannibal, but he has learned a piece of personal wisdom from his absence.

If you ever madly loved, the feeling of being in love with that someone clings to you; even if they are no more real than their past impression in your head, even if for years you try to love and live with someone else… it feels real, yet not the same. Incomplete. And the question ever lingers in your mind, leaving an ache in your heart - what would it have been like to have _that_ person and _that_ love back. 

This was his chance. 

Will's lip quivers, just a tiny nervous jolt, and he can barely recognise his own voice, but he tries hard to hold Hannibal's gaze when he finally responds.

"Well… I think about you…," he is scrambling for honest words, and once he starts, the thoughts naturally tumble off his tongue, "a lot... I miss our conversations, I miss our dinners, and I haven't ever missed my dogs as much as I miss you."

Hannibal still regards him from under the lashes. There is no hope, no disbelief; he is utterly unreadable as if drifting in the corridors of his own mind, searching for decisions of what to do about his… what? Will realises he has been nothing if not a handful for everyone around him. A handful of a son to Jack, a handful of a friend to Alana. To Chyioh, he felt like a stepbrother she never wanted, and at last, all of that, plus an enemy and an object of love to Hannibal. That all to him but a lover, but a partner for life. 

Genuine anguish took over him. He doesn't want Hannibal to give up because he is finally serious about using a means of influence other than violence. He grasps for the man's hand to elaborate his point, brings it to his scarred cheek, and leans in, unconsciously mimicking the tactic of his strays after misbehaving; they ask for affection, acceptance. Hannibal's fingers stir, his eyes flutter shut and open to fix on Will's face.

Will parts his mouth to say in earnest 'please' as Hannibal drops down on his knees. Hannibal's lips descend upon him. They shape against Will's for in a whisper of a touch, a hint of what is finally happening. They move at once, of course, in perfect sync - they think alike - to ravish one another in open-mouthed kisses they've ever gotten and given each other in their dreams.

It feels incredibly right, heat and tongues, bodies aligned, clutching at each other like a lifeline, while losing all sense of space and time. Natural. 

Emboldened, Will decides to take another natural, instinctively logical step and rolls his hips into Hannibal's. Hannibal, not breaking the kiss, reaches for the belt of Will's jeans. And he knows the man has such beautifully shaped, long fingers, apt for the task, but he tries to help with one hand, nevertheless. 

It's hard to get his pants down when trying to stay in each other's laps and grind their groins, fighting against the layers of clothes between them that are quickly becoming damp. How is it even possible? He missed the moment when Hannibal succeeded to uncurl himself and, with the dexterity of a cat, slid down under him, stretching his long legs, and manoeuvring Will to straddle his thighs. 

At last, they come apart for breath. Hannibal, taking advantage of the shift, hefts him up in front of his face. Will has to use both hands to brace himself against the edge of the bed, on Hannibal's shoulders, whatever he can reach, though he doesn't know if it's more for leverage or for what he anticipates to come. Hannibal gives up on divesting him of the damned jeans, sticks to necessities, and with few efficient movements, frees him out and into his mouth, swallowing him whole with one fluid glide of slippery lips.

The world turns ineffable. The ecstasy he's foreseen is so unexpected it punches a high pitched, almost painful wail out of his lungs, and Will doubts Hannibal heard him, busy with his responsive, swollen prize, sucking it deep against the back of his throat. Hannibal is not a tease; there is no preamble to how he devours him with a vigour built on six years of cultivated hunger for Will. 

There's no chance he'll last much longer, even with the help of tightly squeezed eyes, long hauls of air or fingers nearly in cramps from clamping onto Hannibal's arms as he fights to draw one panting gasp after another. Nothing serves to slow his release, and he comes in uncontrolled quivers and hot, wet jets, and if he were able to think, he would believe that Hannibal must have drowned in their surge. 

He allows himself a few seconds to recover his senses and mobility of his limbs, listening from the comfort of Hannibal's shoulder how his lover's breath subsides, before he latches onto Hannibal's mouth, without thinking twice about what he is going to find. Hannibal flavours Will's mouth with his. And still, it's a shock. 

He pushes himself away, eyes wide, a little distance from Hannibal's face, letting him see how he feels about the taste. Will is an open book right now, and so is Hannibal.

"Sorbet." A flicker of mischief in those impossibly piercing amber eyes is fast overwritten by yet unquenched want.

It prompts Will to reach blindly for the zipper of Hannibal's slacks and fumble through the opening of the soaked briefs for his cock. He doesn't need to see him. He visualises its sheer size, its fullness, its throbbing life under its velvety surface with the help of his fingers, and only at this moment he admits to himself, how many times in the past few years he's fantasied about Hannibal this way.

Hannibal mouths along his neck. Hot puffs accompanied by his tongue's silky swipes are synchronised with slides of Will's thumb through the fluid that pools atop his slit. For Will's sake, Hannibal holds back a little longer, patient with him as ever, letting him savour what he correctly assumes is his first time touching another man. Fills him up on scent and textures of distinctively male skin. But only until under Will's more enthusiastic than refined ministrations does his breath start to break, his body shivers, and inevitably he tries to thrust into the clenched hand. Will pulls him along the edge of sizzling sensation and then lets him slip, ever so gently back, and back and there and back and there... 

"Will," Hannibal murmurs into the hollow under his chin, a combination of plea and warning punctuated by the light scrape of teeth.

His hands slide under Will's shirt. They startle him, cools palms over feverish skin, and make his movements jerk over the slick burgeoning head. They sneak around his waist, and Hannibal draws him tight against his entire frame. Aligns himself with Will in every way, determined to take him along through his climax, projecting his own shuddering sensations onto Will's bare skin, any place their bodies glide and graze, as he spills between their stomachs. They both hover on the verge of strain, soar and sink down, smothering the unavoidable moans in languorous kisses.

Will thinks for a moment that he may understand what it means to be conjoined in every possible sense until he doesn't want to think anymore. His eyes settle at Hannibal, rose-coloured and loving while spent and tired - this is too, his design. High on endorphins, Will suddenly wants to laugh.

And when Hannibal groans, "a bath?" against his mouth, he does. 

*****

Later, they lay in the ridiculous canopy bed in a mirror image, linen sheets around their waists, their right and left-hand palms touching. The glass wall separating their worlds is absent, and Will threads his fingers through Hannibal's. 

Will watches Hannibal watching him. Outside their private sanctuary, sunset advances and the colourful shadows creep down over the canopy fabric and over their relaxed bodies. They soften sharp angles of Hannibal's features, match them with tender haziness peering from behind his half-lidded eyes. He can hear the music from behind the door, Chiyoh's tactful way of drowning the sounds they might make with Dvorak's Slavonic Dance. The romantic piano passage flows from fortissimo to diminuendo in a smooth wave, volume lessening like the lingering reservations between them. At the moment, Will is happy and content, and far from satiation with his appetite for this man.

"Are you not tired?"

Will shakes his head, and Hannibal squeezes his hand. He moves to the touch, propping himself up on one elbow and shifting over Hannibal's body to brace himself on the other side of his head. He is fresh from shower, still wet in places but still so warm. Will frowns a bit, focusing on the countenance of his lover now, then buries his nose right into the crook between the man's neck and shoulder, where the sweat might still cling to his skin.

Hannibal turns face toward the side of Will's head.

"Are you trying to smell me?" Hannibal's voice is like a rustle of sandpaper. Will squirms on top of him, already half aroused and nowhere to hide.

"What do you expect to sense?" He doesn't suppress his amusement once his curiosity is picked.

"Chemicals, diet food, increased sweat… I can't…I don't know."

"Those are only the symptoms; what would be the procuring cause?"

"Can we not do this now?" Will groans. He doesn't feel like continuing in _'scentology'_ lesson even just for Hannibal's sake. They shall proceed with the account of their damages and scars later on because he doesn't like the strained way Hannibal moves around the house, and the dinner seemed to him too dull for the gourmand's sensitive mouth.

"Right." Hannibal relents surprisingly fast. "Do you remember our conversation when we met at the start, in the motel room? People had a tendency to treat you like fragile china. I insinuated taking care of you, and while you pretended you were amused, you were, in fact, offended."

"And?"

"You are doing the same."

Hannibal still talks to his ear, which itself has an impressive effect on Will, and with featherlight taps trailing along his spine, he doesn't wish to move. He just nods. "Are you offended too?"

"No, I'm happy to think you care, though I'm not confident about what." Is it jesting that Will can hear in Hannibal's voice? 

"You like me incapacitated. This state of mine provides a solution to a lot of problems between us."

"Yeah, I don't know about 'a lot,' but 'some'? Maybe." At this point, Will's senses were starting to wake up, and he began to sniff where this interrogation might lead, a different approach for the same concern.

"We can establish that at the same time, you worry."

Will lifts himself, swipes solemn eyes over Hannibal's face. "You? Are _you_ not tired?" He is the one who is supposed to ask. "I don't want to... put you through additional strain."

"You mean sex." Hannibal deadpans, though his eyes dance. Will fights hard to school his expression, and not to blush.

He pulls Will down for a kiss, a soft peck aimed for his upper lip and hits the nose instead, then draws him further onto his chest. His arms are warm and firm around him, and they don't yield when Will tries to shift his full weight off Hannibal's body. A subtle, warm puff of smile tickles his nape. "I'm not incapacitated to the measure you might believe." 

Hannibal learns him fast. He licks and then blows gently at the shell of Will's ear, already taking advantage of this soft spot to effectively ensnare Will, and make him crave more of that touch. Hannibal's deliberately low voice curls through the air around Will's head like a purr, his lion beckoning him to play. 

"Will," he exhales, as if saying his name with such deep suffering breath shall reveal everything, "I was waiting for you, for years."

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, please let me know what you think, I will love to respond :) Thank you for reading! I'm Skadalex at [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/skadalex), some more stuff on Will/Molly is there if you want to take a look.


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